


Interlude: In Flashback

by boxoftheskyking



Series: Everything Is a Fucking Crisis [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Flashback, How Jess Met Poe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6089199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Jess Met Poe.<br/>Starts in a bar, like all good things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude: In Flashback

**Author's Note:**

> This is crossposted from Tumblr, because it's technically a part of this series.

It’s a Resistance-friendly bar, one that attracts all sorts but the fights are never too bad and the drinks are probably not poisonous. Jess is at the bar alone - Tsi Na ditched her fifteen minutes ago to flirt with a Mon Calamari, and Jess hasn’t had time to finish her drink. She’s not looking to pick anyone up, not really - she hasn’t showered since landing three hours ago, and she’s that post-flight tired that makes her a little slow on the banter. But she’s never going to leave a drink. The day she leaves a drink undrunk is the day she dies.

When the guy comes over to lean on the bar next to her she shifts away from him, pretending to check a buzz on her comm.

“Someone’s going to pick that crowfoot right out of your pocket if you’re not careful.”

She turns to him in surprise, one hand going to check on the wrench she’d forgotten in her back pocket. He grins at her. Looks familiar, a bit, like somebody she’s seen in a photo maybe. Looks like he’d photograph well, anyway.

“Thanks.”

“I’m the same way. Like, I know the mechanics have got it, technically. But.” He shrugs, self-aware and joking. “That’s my girl, you know? Gotta check everything myself.”

A pilot. Makes sense that he’s familiar, anyway. The base here isn’t big, but everyone’s always coming and going. She grants him a fifteen degree turn on her barstool.

“How do you know I’m not a mechanic?”

“Please. What mechanic on this planet is going around with a crowfoot ‘stead of a combo?”

She laughs. 

“So maybe I’m a backwoods mechanic.”

He holds up his hands. “You got me. What’s the backwoods mechanic drinking?”

Her drink is only three-quarters empty. She gives him a good, thorough once-over while she makes up her mind.

“Not looking to pull tonight,” she warns. “Haven’t even showered yet.”

He shrugs. “No worries. Just want to hear about the mission. Heard you had some unexpected asteroid trouble coming out of hyperspace.”

She sits up at that. “And where did you hear that?”

“I hear everything.” He makes a face. “Not everything. Most things.”

“So you know who I am, then. Puts me at a disadvantage.”

He smiles and might be a little pink. Maybe it’s just the light. Whatever it is, smiling makes him look young. “Um,” he starts. “You could be one of three people? Maybe four? I think three human women were on that mission.”

She raises and eyebrow and waits.

“You’re Miri Lando—No, no, I’m wrong.”

Jess laughs in his face. “Miri Landorean is like three times my size.”

“Shit. Well. Good to know.”

“Jessika Pava.”

He holds out a hand. “Poe Dameron.”

She shakes it. “Riiiiiiiight.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“That’s either really great or really awful.”

She smiles and says nothing.

“Ah.” He scratches the back of his neck and takes a drink of something reddish she hadn’t noticed before. “For the record? I don’t mind that you haven’t showered.”

“No?”

He leans in toward her and smiles. “Ozone. It’s comforting.”

“That’s not ozone. Not on this world.”

“Whatever. I’m from Yavin 4, give me a break. Burning atmo. I like it.”

She finishes her drink. “You can buy me another.”

“What’ll it be?”

“Crowfoot.”

He laughs, surprised, and she likes this laugh the best so far. “Have you actually _had_ a Crowfoot? It’s basically tar.”

“I have a strong constitution.”

He shrugs and waves the bartender over to order. She manages the first sip with only a minor seizure, and he graciously lends her his own drink to wash it down.

“That’s the stuff,” she gasps hoarsely, and he straight up giggles into his sleeve.

“So,” he says when she’s calmed down. “Let me guess.” He affects an earnest but overdramatic tone, leaning in again and giving her full on bedroom eyes. “Your dad was a pilot, and you’re carrying on his legacy, and boy does it get lonely, but you saw the way your ma fell apart after he died and you couldn’t ever do that to someone, so you keep your heart locked away because it’s safer for everyone. So you can keep someone company for the night, but you’ve sworn off any long term entanglements.”

She blinks at him.

“Is that what you use?”

He drops the act. “Hell _yes_ that’s what I use. You don’t?”

“That’s so … grown up.”

He shrugs. “Everyone in D Company uses that line. You get the sex, you get no strings, and everyone thinks you’re doing them a favor. It’s ideal.”

“Huh. Any of it true?”

“My ma was the pilot.”

She smiles. “Figures.”

“So what do you use?”

“Hmm?”

“Your line, what’s your line. Come on.”

“Well now I’m embarrassed.”

He turns towards her, straddling his stool, and taps his chest. “Hit me, come on.”

“Okay, but first—”

“No excuses, come on. You look like a woman who gets laid when she needs to.”

“Yeah, no, it works. But you gotta know I just started flying — for real flying — like three years ago.”

“How old are you?”

“Younger than you.”

He waves it off. “So’s everybody, that’s my life. You’re stalling.”

She takes another sip of the Crowfoot, grimacing, and then turns to face him, mouth serious, eyes that mix of world-weary, vulnerable, and innocent she’s spent years of singlehood perfecting. “I’m flying a mission tomorrow. Real dangerous—”

“Noooooo!”

She covers her face with her hands. “Ahhh I know!”

“ _Jessika_! You _don’t.”_

“It’s so amateur, I know, I know.”

She looks at him through her fingers, and he’s rosy cheeked and delighted.

“That’s ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. Does it work?”

“Hell yes, it works.”

He settles back against the bar and grabs his drink, saluting her with it. “Well, good for you. Only works ‘cause you’re fucking gorgeous. They’re already looking for an excuse to take you home.”

She snorts at him. He smiles.

Next thing she knows it’s two hours later and the clientele around them are getting shadier. They’ve been swapping stories - mostly embarrassing things they’ve seen or done, places they’ve been, engine problems they’ve heard of from a friend of a friend of a friend. Poe knows all the words to some sappy love song from Naboo that starts playing, and she teases him for it.

"I also know it in Wookiee," he says, and by the time he's done with his caterwauling she is weeping with laughter.

They head outside and wait for a cab together, and she wonders if they’re splitting it, if they’re going back to her place, if they should talk about it. She takes a second to worry about losing a new friend in an awkward morning after, but then he steps in something wet and blue and looks up at her with the silliest, most melancholy expression, and she suddenly isn’t worried about the morning after.

She pulls him over to the road, laughing as he tries to scrape off his shoe on the pavement, and keeps a grip on his sleeve as they fall silent, waiting.

“You know,” she starts, then chickens out. She never chickens out.

He looks at her and she gets her nerve back.

She leans in to him. “I’m flying this mission tomorrow. Very dangerous.”

He bursts out one of those surprised laughs, the best ones, and then turns to her, tipping her chin up with one curved finger. He’s still smiling when he kisses her, so sweet that for a minute she’s afraid she might fall in love. But then he pulls back with her bottom lip between his teeth and he tugs and she grounds herself with her fingers in his belt loops and the cab comes and she gives the driver her address with no hesitation.

“I actually do have a mission tomorrow,” he says in the cab. They aren’t touching — can’t with the engine between them. He has to shout over the roar of it. These odd speeder cabs with their strange sidecar-seats.

“Oh yeah?” she shouts back. “Where?”

He shrugs. “Someplace fuckin’ swampy, knowing my luck.”

She nods, thinks about pushing it, but you never know who’s listening in a speeder cab, and while most of this town is Resistance-friendly, there’s always someone monitoring.

The sex — once they get back to the apartment she shares with two other pilots, back to her tiny bedroom — is fantastic. He has excellent hands, steady and strong and nowhere near wearing out by the time she’s done with them, and he eats her out like it’s his job. And while she isn’t falling in love, it’s still satisfying as anything to hear “Fuck, fuck, Jess, ah _shit_ ,” when he pulls out and comes over her stomach.

After, they lay side by side and talk about home, about things they remember from being kids, about what they ate on their birthdays as far back as they can recall. She falls asleep with his hand wrapped around hers, his toes tucked under the curve of her foot.

In the morning, he sits behind her in just his boxers and braids her hair. It’s a style she hasn’t tried before, too complicated to do herself, and she kind of wishes he was sticking around.

When he leaves, she gives him a giant hug, and he kisses the top of her head and says “Fly well, Jess Pava. We’ll see each other again.”

She smiles up at him. “War’s getting worse. I expect we’ll have to.”

She sends him off with another kiss and a solid smack to his ass, and finally goes to shower.

Four months later she’s been promoted —mostly, she thinks, for skill, but also to meet a rapidly growing threat from the First Order — and transferred to the command base. She stands in the hangar with her helmet under one arm, running a hand through her messy hair and staring at rows and rows of fully maintained X-Wings. Her old base had three.

A grin of a voice floats up beside her and somebody bumps her shoulder.

“Somebody’s moving up in the world.”

She smiles over at him. “Thought I’d see you again.” She notices the patch on his uniform jacket — he, like the rest of the base, is in full dress to welcome the new squadron — and raises her eyebrows. “Lieutenant Commander. I’m not the only one moving up.”

He smiles back, still looking young but with a hint of steel in his eyes and around his shoulders that she didn’t notice last time. There’s a new cut on his forehead, deep-looking but mostly healed, and a smear of engine grease behind his ear.

“I’m glad you’re here,” is all he says, looking out over the fleet.

Her stomach flips in a way that’s so close to love that the difference hardly matters. The feeling sinks into her spine and the soles of her feet and as she watches him watch the others, something burning behind his eyes, and she thinks, _ah, shit. I’d follow him anywhere._


End file.
